The Size of Addiction - What Size Are You?

You know how it feels to want your child to heal, to recover, to make sense, to “get it” – but they don’t?  Of course you know what would help them, if only they did it!  And when they don’t, it can look like waves of anxiety, resentment, anger, disgust, exhaustion, depression, a sick to the stomach aching.  A wanting things different asap can quickly have us seeking control in sneaky kind of ways.  Sound kind of familiar?

Last week we discussed “Behaviors Make Sense” from The Invitation to Change Approach.  The truth is that using substances fills a purpose, using meets various wants and needs.  Sometimes it becomes as important as getting your next breath, or stopping excruciating physical or emotional pain.  Our thoughts and physical needs can have us giving into temptation in an instant, now add to that an addiction and it begins to make more sense.

Considering that behaviors make sense may not necessarily make it easy for you to withstand, but instead it can make it easier to understand and therefore actually help you to determine next steps.  Let’s continue to seek understanding. For where there is understanding, there can be peace and reconnection to love and relationship.

Topic #2:

One Size Doesn’t Fit All 

• Every one is different.  We have different qualities, personalities, wants and needs.
• Being told what to do, especially without a connected safe relationship, or when it feels like it's someone else's time or way (let's call that feeling controlled),  just doesn’t work for sustainable change.
• We all like to have the power of choice.  Let's face it, having options and choices feels better than stuck in one way without choices.

Why One Size Doesn’t Fit All Matters?

• Understanding your own strengths and needs helps you to identify your priorities.  Understanding that your child may have very different wants and needs that makes sense to them is critical to connect with them.
• Connection strengthens relationships.  Relationships create the foundation for communication.  Communication nurtures possibilities for change (and it would most probably begin with you, and feel good too).
• Being open minded allows you to collaborate, to offer without latching onto end results, can help you to consider all perspectives and options, to develop patience and provide the kind of supports that may inspire change (most certainly in you and maybe for your child too).

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Life Application Ideas

• Write a list of your own strengths
• Write a list of your child’s strengths
• Consider what it would look like in you and from you to create the conditions for safe relationships, calm, compassion, curious communication, collaboration, understanding (not necessarily agreement), patience, delaying or releasing outcomes in order to develop connection
• Talk about topics other than the struggles, other than addiction
• Look for and reinforce the good
• Help yourself by accessing support and resources
• Help your child if and when receptive to access supports and resources towards health
• Help your child explore what might feel right for them, what works for them and why, what strengths they think they have

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“The advice you’ve been giving your family and friends turns out to be advice for you to live, not us. Become a student of yourself.” ~ Byron Katie
 
I’ll send some more information about The Invitation to Change next week.  Until then, I invite you to consider with an open mind, open heart, with compassion how behaviors, emotions, attitudes actually make sense – in others and in yourself - and how there are many roads to travel, many ways to travel those roads, that we all have our unique perspective and thoughts about what will work for us, when and how. 

Breathe, touch your heart, feel the love in you, send it out to your child, to the world, to anyone who needs it. 

Love wins here!

To learn more about The Invitation to Change Approach and access additional resources, please click here:  https://cmcffc.org/about

To Peace and Possibility!

​Joanne